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I Enjoy This Too Much: “I don’t serve your brother, Your Grace.”

If you haven’t listened to the audio commentary on S4:E2, I recommend you try it. There are four people in the commentary, including GRRMartin, and they have something to say through nearly the entire episode. When they get to the part where Cersei confronts Brienne, though, everyone goes quiet. It’s like they all realized: “Oh, wait, two ferocious ladies are talking! Everyone shut the hell up!”

If they don’t want to interrupt the amazing acting of Lena Headey and Gwendoline Christie, I don’t blame them, but now I’m going to fuck with the scene. The ferocious ladies are talking about Jaime, so I can’t resist.

Cersei looks up at Brienne, and on the show she says: “I owe you my gratitude.” In my re-interpretation she says: “I’ll give you until tomorrow morning to leave the city before I have you killed. I’m giving you a good head start because you took care of Jaime. I’m generous like that.”

Brienne responds, on the show: “In truth he rescued me, Your Grace.” I have added: “Your brother saved me from a bear, and you think he won’t hate you for having me killed? What is in your wine?”

“Oh, Cersei, he looked so sexy jumping into that bear pit! You should’ve been there to see it!”

Cersei returns: “Sworn to Renly Baratheon, sworn to Catelyn Stark. And now my brother.” I have added: “People seem to like you, so I’ll make sure it looks like an accident. Jaime will never know it was me.”

“I wonder what it’s like to have people trust you even after you’ve fought for their rivals? I wouldn’t know, because nobody trusts me. Can’t imagine why.”

I may be giving Cersei too much credit here, come to think of it. She doesn’t have the foresight to make a murder look like an accident.

“I mean, he’s a Kingsguard, so he can’t marry me, but I am trying to convince him to run off with me and your little sister-in-law. You should’ve been nicer to my lady’s daughter.”

Cersei on the show: “But you love him.” I have added: “You are, and we both know it.”

And then there’s that look. It’s the “deer in headlights” look.

Brienne has no line on the show, but I have added: “Do you really think so?”

Nah, I jest. I’m sure what’s really going through Brienne’s head right there is more like: “Oh, fuck, she knows.”

Cersei has no line on the show. I have added: “You’re not even denying it.”

That would’ve been a good time for Brienne to say, “No, Your Grace, I don’t feel that way about Jaime. We’re just friends! Nah, we’re not even friends, I’m just here at the Red Keep until I find some other lord or lady to serve.” But she doesn’t even say that.

We pull back to a view of the crowd. Jaime is in the foreground, looking toward Brienne and Cersei. Brienne looks up in his direction. There’s no dialogue from the show. I have added a speech bubble for Brienne: “If I turn up dead tomorrow, it’s not an accident!”

I think Brienne now realizes she made a terrible mistake in attending the wedding. Oh, it’s about to get worse. It’s about to get so much worse! Then again, Cersei’ll be plenty preoccupied and she’ll forget about her plans to have Brienne killed.

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About alysonmiers

Alyson the Incorrigible of House Miers; High Priestess of Sparkly Fractal Flames; Summoner of Creative Insults; Wrangler of Adverbs, Semicolons and Conditional Clauses; Bane of Euphemisms; Mixer of Genres; and Mother of Witches.